In the News (Thu 14 Dec 17)

The Trieste, designed by Swiss scientist Auguste Piccard, was a bathyscaphe, or "deep boat." Before bathyscaphes, the deepest-diving vessels were bathyspheres -- steel spheres lowered and raised by a cable attached to a mother ship overhead.

Divers JacquesPiccard (Auguste's son) and Navy Lieutenant Don Walsh were confined to a six-foot-diameter, 14-ton spherical steel capsule at the base of the ship.

Piccard and Walsh began their descent by flooding the air tanks with sea water.

JacquesPiccard is a Swiss oceanic engineer best noted for making the deepest ocean dive (with Lt. Don Walsh) in the bathyscaph Trieste, a submersible vessel he helped build with his father, Auguste Piccard.

Jacques Ernest-Jean Piccard was born in Brussels, Belgium in 1922, where his Swiss-born father taught at the city's university.

Piccard and Walsh sat in a 6-ft-diameter (1.8-m) steel capsule at the base of the ship while the vessel made the nearly five-hour dive to the ocean floor.

Born in Lausanne, Switzerland, in 1958 into a family of explorers and scientists, Piccard was enamored with adventure at an early age and inspired by his grandfather, August Piccard, who pioneered high altitude balloon flight, invented the Bathyscaphe deep-diving submarine, and created the concept of the pressurized cockpit.

Piccard was subsequently awarded the Légion d’Honneur, the Olympic Order, the Gold Medal of the French Ministry of Youth and Sport, and was recognized with distinction by the Federation Aeronautique Internationale, the National Geographic Society, and the American Academy of Achievement.

Piccard and his co-pilot on the historic flight, Great Britain’s Brian Jones, later founded with Breitling the Winds of Hope Foundation to inform the media of intolerable situations and to appeal for financial assistance for humanitarian projects.

www.au.af.mil /au/goe/eaglebios/03bios/piccar03.htm (486 words)

Jacques Piccard(Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-06)

'''JacquesPiccard''', son of Auguste Piccard, was born in Brussels on 28 July1922.

Jaques Piccard went diametral: he was the first man to dive to the deepest location in the sea, the Challenger Depth within Mariana Trench (-10916m), with his submarine "Trieste".

JacquesPiccard's son Bertrand Piccard was the first one to fly around the world nonstop with the balloon "Orbiter 3" in March 1999.

Jeannette Piccard's papers in the Subject File reflect her role in the Episcopal Church and as an educator.

Jeannette Piccard's files comprise the bulk of the material and exhibit her work as an aerospace consultant with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and, more fully, her ordination as a priest.

Piccard followed the adventuring tradition in his family, which began in 1931 when his physicist grandfather Auguste became the first man ever to take a balloon into the stratosphere.

In 1960, Auguste's son, Jacques, took a supersubmarine called a "bathyscaphe" (after the Greek for "deep boat") to the bottom of the Mariana Trench in the Pacific _ the deepest point on the Earth's surface.

Piccard's wife, Michelle, and his three small children were headed out to Egypt to meet their hero.

Piccard, 41, a Swiss psychiatrist, and Jones, 51, a British balloon flight instructor, had hoped to touch down alongside the pyramids at Giza.

Piccard followed a family adventuring tradition, which began in 1931 when his physicist grandfather Auguste and his partner became the first men ever to take a balloon into the stratosphere, rising almost 10 miles (16 kilometers) high.

In 1960, Auguste's son, Jacques, took a super submarine called a "bathyscaphe" (after the Greek for "deep boat") to the bottom of the Mariana Trench in the Pacific -- the deepest point on the earth's surface.

Piccard thought of using glass shaped like a cone with a truncated peak opening outward within the steel; he would look through the narrow flat surface and gain a wide field of view, while the outside pressure would force the glass firmly against a seal and prevent leaks.

Piccard was past sixty now, but he proceeded with his plan and soon was arranging to have the cabin cast from steel.

Piccard and Walsh spent a restless night on the eve of their descent, stirred not so much by excitement as by the ship’s rolling and by repeated test explosions, whose shock waves, rebounding from the sea floor, were used to measure its depth.

JacquesPiccard couldn't attend due to health, but Bertrand Piccard spoke on behalf of his father.

Piccard and Jones recalled how inordinately fortunate they thought themselves to be as the winds blew precisely in their favor, they narrowly escaped death from an air-supply problem, and a meteorologist's hunch sent them successfully across the Pacific on a southern route no one had tried before.

Piccard and Jones began in Chateau d'Oex, Switzerland on March 1 and crossed over Mauritania (see map below) early in the course, placing their circumnavigation mark at 9 degrees, 27 minutes west.

Auguste's son (and Bertrand's father), JacquesPiccard, worked for NASA and also invented the Bathyscaphe, a submersible vessel which allowed Piccard and U.S. Navy Lieutenant Donald Walsh to explore the 36,198-foot depth of the Mariana Trench, the deepest part of any ocean on earth.

Piccard's and Jones' successful orbit won them a one million dollar prize put up by a major beer company, half of which they have agreed to donate to various organizations which help impoverished children in the countries they flew over.

It is the story of building high-flying balloons and deep diving bathyscaphs (literally "deep boats") to explore two of the most exotic locales on Earththe upper atmosphere and the deep ocean depths.

Piccard recognized that the design of a pressurized gondola for high-altitude balloon research is similar to a spherical chamber designed to withstand thousands of pounds of pressure per square inch when diving deep into the ocean.

In 1934, Jean Piccard and his wife Dr. Jeannette Piccard (a chemist), set a world altitude record when they piloted their gondola to a height of 57,579 feet (17,550m) above sea level.

Explorers Jacques Cousteau and Emile Gagnan develop the first scuba that allows divers to stay underwater for extended periods and more effectively explore the ocean realm.

Through the use of echo soundings, Marie Tharp discovers that the Mid-Atlantic Ridge conceals a long rift valley, which turns out to be part of a hidden volcanic mountain range that extends the entire length of the Atlantic ocean.

JacquesPiccard, son of explorer August Piccard, and two other men descend into the ocean to a depth of 35,797 feet, nearly seven miles.

Son of the legendary Swiss inventor, Auguste Piccard, Jacques set a world record aboard his father's submarine, Trieste, in a seven-mile descent to the bottom of the Marianas Trench off the Philippines.

In addition to the broad oceanographic research the crew would conduct, NASA was interested in studying the environment aboard the sub as an analog to life aboard a space station.